Having a full kitchen to whip up delicious and comforting meals is one of my favorite luxuries of van life. I love cooking foods that are easy and convenient, but also healthy and inspiring. In order to make van life cooking enjoyable, though, it’s important to design and plan a van kitchen that works for you.
Step 1: Cutting Out Plywood
The first step in this project was breaking down all of the 1/2” baltic birch plywood we needed for the build. We will just be focusing on the left side storage box first. While Johnny and I cut pieces to width on the table saw, Molly was cutting pieces to length on the miter-saw. We used this awesome crosscut sled from Rockler to insure our crosscuts were nice and square at the table saw. Before assembly we went ahead and sanded everything with 180 grit paper.
Step 2: Assembly
When assembling the box we used wood glue, brad nails to hold everything together, and finally finish head screws to add some extra strength. Make sure you are keeping things square while assembling.
Step 3: Installing Drawer Slides
Next is was time to mount the VADANIA VA2053 drawer slides which was really tricky. This is a super tight space and johnny’s right angle drill really helped out here. We are using 32” heavy duty slides for this project. After attaching them inside the cabinet, we placed 1/4” spacers under the box and slide it into place. We pulled the box out slightly and screwed the slide into the box. We couldn’t reach the last screw hole and had to remove the box to finish screwing the slide down.
Step 4: Drawer Front
Last step for this side was to create the drawer front. Johnny cut a board to fit and used a clever trick with playing cards to get the drawer front centered. We cut a small strip of leather out using a rotary cutter and then punched a small hole for a screw to go threw. Using a finish head washer available from Rockler we screwed the leather handle on insuring that the screws we used would go all the way through and into the box to attach the draw front on. That wraps up this side and now onto the kitchen side.
Step 5: Kitchen Slide Out
This pullout is different in that its just a platform and not a full box. The kitchen boxes will sit on top of this platform and will be able to be taken off and used else where very easily. We used the same method of first applying glue and tacking it together with brad nails and then adding strength with screws. This platform doesn’t have a bottom, only a top and it actually hangs over the edge a bit to cover up the drawer slide as you’ll see shortly. Last step in this project was to again attach the draw slides. This side was a bit easier as the opening was larger, but still required us to remove the box to finish the last couple of screws. With that in place the pullouts are done.